I love a food fad. In fact, I just love food. Preferably in excess, but lots of moderation counts. As in, that was a ‘moderate’ food intake, now I’ll eat yours.

But I love a food fad because they’re so transparently stupid. And they last for approximately 3 months until someone says ‘actually, if you DO eat that three times a week you’ll die of heart failure within… well, TODAY!!!!’

I used to love looking at the ‘recipe’ bits in the Sunday mags. Fabulous steaks, golden chickens, roasted this, broiled that, topped with melted cheese… I didn’t even mind that they’d add a salad now and again, just in the interest of adding another colour to the picture (that’ll be green then) but also to make us feel better about the immensely high-carb, red-meat calorie-fest they wanted us to replicate.

Now it all leaves me cold. Because mainly, it is cold. Jamie, Ella, various Hemsleys, they’re only publish recipes that are ‘on message’, that are heavy on the quinoa, rich in kale, exceptionally low in taste. I mean ‘greens’ are fine. When consumed next to something big and meaty and juicy. They are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Unless you count ‘the end of enjoyable eating’.

And we’ve had a couple years of ‘clean eating’. Which was basically ‘cleaned of any or all possible goodness, flavour or calories’. Bring out the spinach but for God’s sake DON’T COOK IT!!! And salad dressings (remember them?) are a thing of the past. Kill ya. Stone dead. Sugar? Salt?? Jesus; what were you thinking? Bread? Might as well eat broken bottles. Carbs?? Devil’s food. Why? Because it was decided that the entire world is gluten intolerant. Even the (now reckoned) 99% of us who aren’t. Yes, we’re all closet glutards just waiting for that bloated feeling. Gluten intolerance. Might as well cut out all wheatgerm. Which, in previous fads, was the best food possible.

So now they’ve debunked the whole ‘clean eating’ think for the stupid, excessive over-reacting fadism that it really is. Which, if I’m perfectly honest, makes absolutely no difference to what I’ll now eat, as I never really bought into all that bollocks in the first place. But now, I can eat proper foods again without the sad looks of anorexic waitresses, without the disgust on the faces of the ‘believers’, without any guilt.

Clean is over; let’s eat dirty. Yeahhhhhh!!!!

Happy steak and cheese bagette with extra mayo Friday. Hold the lettuce.

A xxxx